Sarasota PC Monitor

Review Chairmans Industry Comments (11/05)

The Computer Buffet

by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor

E-mail comments, suggestions, etc. to Herb Goldstein at: revieweditor@spcug.org

Perhaps you have a tender morsel that you have found interesting and would like to add to our buffet table and share with our members. Although most of what we offer is freeware, shareware or payware is OK too. It might include software, hardware, or perhaps a tip that might be useful to your fellow computer users. The major requirement is that it be interesting, brief and provide a reference as to where it can be obtained. Please send your favorites to Editor@spcug.org The following from member Nancy Wallace is a good example of a contribution:

SEWERS and QUILTERS. Digital photographs can easily be transferred to fabric. June Tailor has a great product called Colorfast Printer Fabric Sheets (available at JoAnn's and Wal-Mart). These are 8 x 10 inch white (or cream) cotton sheets that are backed with paper. The paper stiffens the fabric enough that the sheet can be fed into your ink jet printer. You print your photo directly on to the fabric side and then peel off the backing. This is a great technique for creating family "memory quilts". Scan in the old family photos, print them onto the fabric sheets, and assemble into a wall hanging or pillow cover just as you would any simple quilt. There are also fusible sheets which can just be ironed onto a backpack, T-shirt or any cloth item. Any questions, email Nancy Wallace (nkwallace@verizon.net).

PUBLIC RECORD SEARCH. The largest directory of free public record databases on the Internet is here . http://www.searchsystems.net/

EBAY SELLER FEEDBACK. Get negative info on an Ebay seller at this site. Www.toolhaus.org

WIKIPEDIA is the largest multi-lingual encyclopedia you'll find anywhere. Here it is on the web with over 50,000 articles. It's an excellent reference tool and it's free. www.wikipedia.org/

OE TWEAKER is a freeware utility designed to give you control over some hidden Outlook Express options and provide an easy way to access the Blocked Senders list. www.qwhale.com/products/outlook _express_tweaker/

FONTHIT FONT TOOLS is a streamlined font management software package that is designed for virtually unlimited functionality via a flexible plugin framework. With the currently available plugins you can view, preview, install, uninstall, print in color, customize size and text of the previews, browse your hard drive and view fonts in convenient categories, use drag-'n-drop to add font files (even folders and zip files with fonts) to the preview list.

You can also search the web for fonts and font-related webpages right from within the Font Tools, using the FontHit Search plugin.

FontHit Font Tools supports various font formats such as True Type, Open Type (not multiple master, yet), most Raster(Bitmap) and installed Type 1. This is only the beginning, check out the plugins that are in the works to get an idea of what is coming. http://software.fonthit.com/ co

KEYTWEAK is a free keyboard remapper for Windows NT/2000/XP. It makes use of Microsoft's Scancode Map registry key to remap your keyboard. VB6 Runtime files are required, but are already present on Windows 2000/XP. http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/

XPIZE is a free GUI enhancer for Windows XP and above. It replaces most of the non-XP icons, avis and bmps that Microsoft has always overlooked. The installer simply automates the process of replacing resources in critical system files, making your XP's look better. It also includes some extras and a reloader, which you can use after visiting Windows Update. Over 150 system files are given a facelift with numerous additional visual improvements. http://xpero.msfn.org/

DUPLICATE FILE FINDER. Duplicate File Finder locates duplicate files and folders on all drives and removable devices. This utility lets you compare files and preview graphics files. It also tells you how much space you'd free up by deleting marked files. Duplicate File Finder lets you add search filters-something many duplicate finders don't allow. You can speed up your searches by having it hit only the likely targets. Protect your data by excluding important folders from your searches. http://srhoda.250free.com/

TOSHIBA READIES FUEL CELLS. Toshiba hopes to release mobile music players powered by fuel cells by 2007. It has developed two small fuel cells that can power players for 35 or 60 hours. The cells use highly concentrated methanol.

OPERA NOW COMPLETELY FREE. In what could be considered a very surprising move, and one that easily could shake the browser market, Opera has made its award winning browser available to the masses for free, void of it's built in Advertisement Banner, giving people the choice of one of the most powerful, flexible and a very secure web browser. Opera Software permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its award-winning Web browser. The ad-free, full-featured Opera browser is now available for download - completely free of charge at www.opera.com.

AVOID AOL'S VENGEANCE. According to PC World's Steve Bass, if you've ever tried canceling an AOL account, you may have hit some roadblocks, like having the customer service rep round-file your request. New York's attorney general and consumer hero, Eliot Spitzer, went to bat for you and coerced AOL into make it easier for customers to terminate their service. Details are in "N.Y. Attorney General Prods AOL on Cancellation Policies," right here: http://www. pcworld.com /news/article/0,aid,122306,tk,sbx,00.asp

FASTSTONE IMAGE VIEWER (free) lets you browse and view your images in a Windows-Explorer-like interface. FastStone image viewer supports all major image formats, including BMP, GIF, ICO, JPEG, JPEG2000, PCX, PNG, PSD, TAF, TIF, and WMF; it includes EXIF metadata support as well. You can crop, resize, flip, rotate, and adjust colors on your images and compare them side by side. You can convert your images from one format to another; you can even convert or resize your photos in batches. If you need to take a closer look without resizing, use the Full Screen image viewer to zoom in and size things up with the clear magnifier. Once you're done, you can apply over 150 transitional effects in a slide show. www.faststone.org/

ADVANCED WINDOWSCARE 1.21. Repair and cure your Windows free with 1 click. Unlike other utilities, Advanced WindowsCare does not do simple registry cleaning. It thoroughly examines Windows system, accurately detects the bottlenecks for slowing down and crashing, and fixes them. With the novel system technology, Advanced WindowsCare empowers you to run computers faster, more stably and more efficiently than with any other system utilities. Version 1.21 fixes popup window bug, and DNS optimization with Windows 2000. www.iobit.com

CLIP ART. Microsoft has a section of the Office website devoted to providing anyone with thousands of clip art images. Just about anything you might want can be found there and downloaded for free. http://office.microsoft.com/clipart

TINYSPELL. Occasionally you need to check the spelling of words in an application that does not include a spelling checker and you don't want to launch your word processor just for that. This is when TinySpell becomes handy. It is a small utility that allows you to easily and quickly check the spelling of words in any Windows application. TinySpell monitors your typing on the fly and alerts you whenever it detects a misspelled word. It also checks the spelling of every word you copy to the clipboard.

TinySpell installs itself in the system tray for easy access. It comes with an American-English dictionary containing more than 110,000 words. www.tinyspell.m6.net/

STANDBY AND HIBERNATE (A Kim Komando tip). Standby and Hibernate are power management options included in Windows. They work similarly in Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP. In each case, you can schedule power savings. These settings are particularly useful on notebooks, and they help conserve power on a desktop computer, too. They are really nice if you leave your computer on and cannot get back soon. The basic difference in these settings is time. Hibernate turns the computer off. Use this if you'll be away from the computer for a long period-for instance, overnight. Standby puts it into a low power state. This mode is typically used for shorter periods.

Why use Standby? The computer rouses quickly when you return to work. But it has a disadvantage, too: Your files are not automatically saved. If there is a power failure while in Standby, your files go bye-bye. So, when you use this mode, save your open files first.

Hibernate, on the other hand, takes much longer to reboot. However, it saves your files before shutting down. So your work is protected. And when it reboots, the desktop is returned to its previous state. That is its biggest advantage. If you used a normal shutdown, the computer would not boot with your files open.

Both modes are under Power Options in Control Panel (Start>>Settings>> Control Panel in Windows 98, ME and 2000; Start>>Control Panel in Windows XP). Select the Power Schemes tab. In Windows 98 and XP, if you want to use one or the other of these modes at different times, set up power schemes. Select either Standby or Hibernate at the bottom of the window. The schedule is selected in the drop boxes. In Windows 2000 and ME, Hibernate is on its own tab. Computer manufacturers must set up the machines for Standby and Hibernate. If these modes are not available or do not work, check with your manufacturer.

MEDIA CD RIPPER is an easy-to-use free CD ripper, that allows you to extract audio tracks from a CD, and automatically convert and save them to your hard drive. It can automatically retrieve CD information from the online freedb database and use it to write ID3 tags for each file. MEDA CD Ripper supports conversion to MP3, WAV and APE. www.medafan.com/

WINPATROL allows you to get a better understanding of what programs are being added to your computer. It monitors important system areas that are commonly altered by many malicious programs. This includes the startup groups (registry and startup folder), cookies and active tasks. You can terminate processes and enable or disable startup programs. The cookie monitoring option allows you to automatically delete cookies based on a keyword found in the cookie name. Additional features include a WHOIS lookup tool and an option to alert you on changes. WinPatrol is easy to understand, yet quiet powerful. Optional upgrade to a Plus version available. This is one of the most helpful applications you can have on your computer! www.winpatrol.com/

GADWIN PRINTSCREEN is an easy to use one-click screen capture tool, that captures the contents of your screen. The captured screen can then be sent to the printer, or saved to disk as a file in 6 different graphics file formats (JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP,TGA and TIF) with optional drop shadow effects. Gadwin PrintScreen supports capturing the entire screen, the active window, the client area or a specified rectangular selection with optional inclusion of the mouse cursor. You can choose to copy the captured image to the clipboard or to auto-save it into a default directory of your choice (with auto-naming option). The hot key defaults to the PrintScreen key, but users may also define other keys to initiate a capture. In addition, Gadwin PrintScreen also includes a feature that allows you to e-mail the captured images automatically. www.gadwin.com/printscreen/

WINAMP FULL V5.09 There are lots of MP3 players available, but this popular free program saves playlists and equalizer settings. The special skins and dozens of color schemes keep it looking good. In addition to playing CDs and most other digital audio formats (.wav, MID, MOD), Winamp has a spectrum analyzer and oscilloscope that will jump and dip with the rhythm of your song. What sets Winamp apart from the pack is the smooth, intuitive way it's designed-how it allows you to easily create and save playlists, for instance.

Want to play at the best fidelity for jazz tunes as well as bass-heavy rock songs? Winamp lets you save equalizer settings for specific songs. The program also has a minibrowser that lets you view biographies and photos, and you can sign up for 3GB of free Internet music storage. Integrated internet TV & radio round out the functions.

You can burn to CD with Winamp. It burns at 2x-if you want to get the best speed out of your burner, consider buying the Pro version, which can support burning up t0 48x.

And of course, there are the skins: Winamp has an endless supply of classic and modern ones. You can dress up the player so that it shows the interior of a fancy car, photos from your favorite TV show, a cubist geometric design, or any of the more than 25,000 other looks created by fans. The program also lets you sub in thousands of plug-ins for everything from encoders to visualizations to games. www.winamp.com/

WHAT'S RUNNING gives you an inside look into your Windows 2000/XP/2003 system. Explore processes, services, modules, IP-connections, drivers and much more through a simple to use application. Find out important information such as what modules are involved in a specific process. Control your system by starting and stopping services and processes. Configure your startup programs easily. http://download.lockergnome.com/download/104343

EXPLORERXP. Windows Explorer could do so much more than it does. Luckily, ExplorerXP goes the extra mile. For starters, this file manager uses tabs, making it easier to keep track of your files. ExplorerXP shows you folder size-not just file size-information, and it shows you the actual size of compressed files and folders. This program supports USB devices. It also lets you merge and split files and rename several files at once. www.explorerxp.com/

VIRTUAL ATLAS OF THE MOON. This amazing combines digital imagery from the 1960s-era catalogue of photographs by NASA's Lunar Orbiter missions with control features to aim your computerized telescope right where you want. Be sure to download and install the 2.1a patch after you download and install the full program. For a greater selection of images, head to the developer's site and pick up the Clementine and Consolidated Lunar Atlas databases. www.astrosurf.com/avl/UK_index.html

CONTROL EMAIL PICTURE SIZE. Windows XP, by default, gives you an option to reduce the size of photos that you attach to email messages in Outlook or Outlook Express, in order to decrease the file size. This is a handy feature if you send pictures from or to a computer that uses a slow dialup connection. Sometimes, however, you may find that the option no longer appears. You can usually fix this by registering a DLL file. Here's how:

  1. Click Start | Run.
  2. Type cmd to open a command window.

3, At the command prompt, type regsvr32 shimgvw.dll.

4. Press [Enter].

5. Close the command window.

REPAIRING OFFICE XP PROBLEMS. There will be moments when an application requires a little help to start functioning properly. Many people go directly to the Control Panel and the Add/Remove Programs applet to solve the problem. Using the Repair feature for the entire Microsoft Office installation may be overkill and doing a complete reinstallation is not necessary. All Microsoft Office Suite applications have a Detect and Repair option located on the Help menu. When this feature is executed from within Microsoft Word, it will verify the integrity of the installation for the application. The Detect and Repair option will only verify the application from which the command was launched. For example, if you launch the Detect and Repair option from within Word, it will not verify the integrity of Excel.

When resolving installation or customization problems for an individual application, the Detect and Repair option found within the application should be your first line of defense. The utility will verify and repair any files that have been corrupted and re-copy files that have been deleted. This is also a nifty trick to reset all customizations for an Office application. If multiple applications are crashing, then the Repair option from the Add/Remove Programs applet should be used.

STOP THE WINDOWS MESSENGER SERVICE. Windows Messenger is used by systems administrators to send messages to computers on their local networks (for example, a message that the network is going to be down at a certain time). However, the service can be used by hackers to pop up messages such as ads on your computer. If you don't operate in a computing environment where you need to receive Windows Messenger messages, you can disable the service. Here's how:

  1. Click Start | Control Panel.
  2. Click Performance and Maintenance.
  3. Click Administrative Tools.
  4. Double click Services.
  5. Scroll down the list of services and highlight Messenger.
  6. Right click it and select Properties.
  7. Click STOP.
  8. In the Startup Type, select Disable.
  9. Click OK. Note that Windows Messenger is not the same thing as MSN Instant Messenger. Disabling Windows

Messenger will not affect your ability to send instant messages over the Internet.

CONVERT FAT TO NTFS. There are a number of reasons to use the NTFS file system in Windows XP instead of the older FAT16 or FAT32 file systems. For example, you need NTFS to be able to encrypt your data on the disk with EFS, or to set file level access controls (permissions). If your partitions are formatted in FAT, you can convert them to NTFS. There are some caveats, though. KB article 307881 explains the requirements, limitations and procedure here: www.wxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm? id=051004CO-KB_307881

PHOTOFILTRE is just about the best freeware image editing and creating program out there today.

PhotoFiltre is the total package when it comes to a free image editing program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve.

If you have used any other image editing software before, you should have no problems with PhotoFiltre. The Web site for PhotoFiltre also has lots of great resources. You can get both plugins and tutorials via its Web site. PhotoFiltre is free for a private, non-commercial, or educational use (including non-profit organizations). In this case, registration is not necessary. But commercial or professional use requires a registration. So are some of the other photo editing software deals out there too expensive for your taste? Then try out PhotoFiltre! http://photofiltre.free.fr/download_en.htm

A BETTER CLOCK. Windows' own clock (in the taskbar tray) is small and plain. It doesn't display seconds, and it has no alarm. Replace it with ClocX, a freebie that lets you set alarms to go off once or on a regular schedule. The alarms can play a sound, display a message, launch an application, or even exit Windows. You can display a pop-up calendar for a quick check of the date, or see both the date and time on your clock face (see FIGURE 5).

Use the program's antialiasing, its transparency levels, or one of its downloadable faces or "skins" to improve the clock's readability. Set ClocX to stay on top of open windows, or activate its "click-through" to place it beneath windows. www.clocx.tk/

LASTCHANCE. We've all found ourselves remembering one more thing to do just as the PC starts shutting down.

Dive in and do that last thing with free LastChance. This desktop utility lets you configure some programs to run just before shutdown. It intercepts the shutdown request and runs the configured programs before finishing the shutdown. www. fileware.com/products.htm

XP SERVICE PAK 3 is coming in 06 according to Microsoft. No major changes are forecast, just an update of what's already there. If you remember all the commotion that accompanied SP2, I'll bet you just can't wait!

ICON RESTORE. Icons don't stay put like they should. With Icon Restore, you can order them back to their places. After installing Icon Restore, you can save the icon layout. Then even if you change the screen resolution, you can call your icons back from their wanderings. http://users.rcn.com/taylotr/icon_restore.html

things have frequently changed, like email messages, antivirus updates, wordprocessor or spreadsheet files, among a passel of other possibilities. Rather than going through the time-consuming procedure of making a whole new backup, use your synchronization software to add, delete or replace only those files or folders in your backup that have been changed, added or removed. Keeps your backup current quickly with no muss, fuss, or bother. You can do it with a single click, or schedule the synchronization while you are asleep or any other convenient SyncBack SE...A Software Gem

It's an idea that's surprising nobody ever thought of before. But now that the secret is out, there's a number of software publishers that have jumped on the wagon. Having done the legwork for you, I am going to introduce you to the best and one of the most innovative software applications I have seen in a good long while.

The name of the game is file synchronization. Essentially what it does is copy specific files or folders of your choice to a specified location on another drive or another computer. Why would you want to do that? There's actually a bunch of very good reasons that make synchronization software one of the hottest games in town. Here's some of scenarios:

  1. You have a laptop computer that you have been assiduously working on away from home and your desktop computer. Now you are home again and want to transfer over only those files that have been changed from your laptop to your desktop, a chore known as keeping the files in synchronization. Of course you can do things the other way around and keep your laptop synchronized to you desktop. Your choice of what files and in which direction.
  2. You have recently backed up files from your working hard drive to your backup hard drive in your computer. Now some time. You can also sync an application's files while that application is still up and running without waiting for later.
  3. Disaster strikes. Some file or folder gets corrupted on your working drive. With a single click in SyncBack you can replace them with their counterparts on your backup drive.
  4. If you have any number of computers networked together you can keep their contents uniform and current with SyncBack . 5. SyncBack allows you to keep the exchange between computers completely private with military strength encryption, especially important if you are synchronizing from a remote location.

6. You can optionally save space by compressing files you are synchronizing.

There are a wide number and variety of options you can apply to synchronization. For exanple, You can not only bring new files into your target folder, you can automatically delete those files in the target that have been deleted in the source. You can create a separate set of options for each folder, and you can easily change your options at any time. You can copy from a source to a destination, from a destination to a source, or both ways. Regardless, syncBack each and every time shows you exactly which files will be revised before you give it permission to do the job. It will also do a trial run if you so choose before the actual synchronization.

Of the numerous new synchronization programs that have all recently come out, SyncBack appears to be the best. It is extremely easy to understand and operate even in the hands of a novice. It offers a 30 day free trial which I encourage you to take advantage of. This is a software gem that has my highest recommendation! PC World awarded SyncBack its coveted world-class software award this past July

SyncBack is free for personal use. SyncBack SE is $25 for commercial use. I have yet to discover the difference between the two. I will leave that up to you. www.2brightsparks.com :

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Copyright 2005. This article is from the November 2005 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/

The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.

See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.